AVU has a new rector from today, Jiří T. Kotalík

Prague - The Prague Academy of Fine Arts (AVU) has a new rector, Jiří T. Kotalík, effective today. His term begins today and will expire at the end of January 2014. This information is provided by the AVU website. Kotalík previously led AVU for two terms from 1997 to 2003, after which Jiří Sopko took over for six years. President Václav Klaus appointed the new rector on January 14.
The Academic Senate of AVU elected Kotalík last autumn with 16 votes out of 21; the only opposing candidate was another faculty member of the academy, Jiří Příhoda.
Kotalík's election was not well-received by some students at the school. According to them, the fact that the senate elected someone who had previously led AVU indicates a conservative tendency in the direction of the school. Students and alumni of AVU wrote an open letter at the end of last year demanding changes, for example, in the way teaching positions are filled.
It seems that critics from the "pro AVU" Initiative have found common ground with the new rector. Based on an agreement with Kotalík, the initiative will hold a public meeting of the AVU academic community at the end of February, where discussions will focus on the future and direction of the school.
In his election program, Kotalík declared primarily a commitment to maintaining the quality standards of the academy, promoting and preserving the specifics of higher art schools, and innovating the structure and content of education according to the needs of students.
Kotalík was born in 1951, worked in the Prague Center for Heritage Preservation and Nature Conservation in the 1970s, served at the Faculty of Philosophy from 1981 to 1984, and in 1984 joined AVU as an assistant in the Department of Theory of Art History. Since 2003, he has been the head of the department. In 2003 and 2004, he served as the general director of the National Heritage Institute. Kotalík is the author of many publications in the field of art and architecture history, particularly from the Baroque period and the 19th and 20th centuries.